This is a deeply touching elegiac novel that mourns for the New York artistic life, which was of a time but now has gone. By extension it is about all losses swept away by mischance and time. Half-blind and alone, Leo tells us of marriage and friendship and makes the sheer fragility of what seemed forever not only his subject, but perhaps the only subject worth considering. Scholars Leo and his wife Erica admire, and befriend, artist Bill and his first and second wives. Their respective sons Matthew and Mark grow up together until the first of a series of tragedies strikes. And things get gradually worse from then on, both because terrible things happen and because people do not get over them.

Popped in for an early evening pint (Rooster's Yankee Pale ale) and left this on the bookshelf opposite the handpumps in the middle of the pub.